


Channel

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:53:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma deals with the aftermath of Ward's betrayal, and feels a need to make him pay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Channel

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains mentions of traumatic brain injuries, torture (although nothing particularly graphic), violence. Written For Ward x Simmons Summer on tumblr, for the week one theme of "fallout."

It’s been two weeks and she’s only left the hospital to eat and sleep. Fitz is still in a coma and the doctor’s have long since gotten annoyed with her constant questions and suggestions.

He’ll wake up when he’s ready. She knows that as a scientist, and as a feeling in her gut.

What she doesn’t know is what he’ll be like when she does wake. The doctor’s can’t predict that extent of the damage. They just have to wait it out.

But he deserves to have her here when he wakes up. And she needs to see him the moment he does. She may not return his romantic feelings, but he’s an integral part of her world, the most important person in her life. He’s felt like a phantom limb these last two weeks. 

She’s wanted to share so many things we him, her hopes for the new SHIELD Coulson’s been tasked with building, her fears regarding their continued lack of official existence (She hasn’t been able to talk to her parents. His mother doesn’t know her son is lying in a hospital bed). But he can’t respond, probably can’t even hear her. So every time she reminds herself to tell him something next time she sees him, it’s like dragging her unconscious body to the surface all over again.

Ultimately, it’s Fitz who gets her to leave the hospital. Well technically it’s Trip, with a request from Coulson. They can’t get Ward to talk. They need to know if she has anything that might help. And she needs to punish him for what he’s done to this team, to her best friend. So ultimately, it’s the anger she knows Fitz would be feeling that propels her to leave the hospital and take up temporary residence at a lab provided by Tony Stark.

She channels all her anger into her work, and she has a lot to be angry about. The memory of Fitz’s lifeless body in her arms haunts her. That is Ward’s fault. He betrayed the team, fed their secrets to a man with a terrible grudge. He made them question all their judgments, that they could have trusted him for so long without realizing what he was capable of. He’s taken chunks out of Skye’s optimism, May’s slow to earn trust, Coulson’s confidence.

And not only did he fail to catch her, like he had promised, he pushed her towards near-certain death.

She doesn’t let herself process her feelings for him. She doesn’t think she has to right to be has hurt as May or Skye. There were no confirmed feelings between them, no declarations or kisses or anything she can pin down as concrete.

She just hoped.

He just made her hope. He manipulated them all, she refuses to blame anyone other than him. He is, after all, an agent of Hydra. Her feelings, her foolish belief he might in some way return them, were just another one of the myriad ways he’s manipulated them all. She wouldn’t blame herself. That would just be letting him hurt her more than he already had.

Instead, she decides to hurt him. She concentrates her years of focused study into providing a means to make him talk, and making sure it hurts him to do so. Her pleasant outlook and cheery nature have always been a choice. And now she chooses to out them away, at least until she’s dealt with the task at hand. Grant Ward no longer deserves smiles and small talk. He deserves to feel the pain they’re all feeling. And she is more than capable of providing that.

When she explains the procedure to the team, May is the only one who doesn’t look at her in shock. She’s been told about the methods they’ve been trying, and it’s not like hers is that much worse, it’s just more efficient. So she figures they just didn’t realize she was capable of this. After all, she’s been nothing but sunshine and self-sacrifice to them, too. Fitz wouldn’t have been surprised if he was there, if he wasn’t still at the hospital in the same condition as when she left. Hell, Fitz probably would have come up with worse.

Skye is the first to champion their using it, but the others agree quickly. She’s their best chance.

Which just means they have to decide who should administer her serum.

At first, Jemma is vehemently opposed to being in the room with Ward. She doesn’t want to see him. It will just be a reminder that, no matter how bloodied and broker he is, he’s still miles better off than Fitz is. He is away and not being fed through a series of tubes and he gets to watch the days pass by. Fitz doesn’t. It’s not fair.

But as impressive as Trip’s medical knowledge is, she’s ultimately the one they need in that room in case anything goes wrong. They can’t let Ward get away, even if he’s getting away to death they believe he deserves.

Which is why she ends up in the dark interrogation room, double-checking each of the sensors she’s attached to Ward’s skin. She doesn’t talk to him, doesn’t even make eye contact, and he returns the favor. Coulson sits across the table from Ward, quietly waiting for Jemma to finish. The rest of the team watches via camera from a room down the gall. They all need this to work. The anguish is exhausting; they need a chance to move past it.

Ward’s entire face looks like a giant bruise. His breathing is slow and labored. Weeks ago this would have had her reaching for her medical kit, desperate to patch him up as best as she could. But now her hardened heart just can’t bring itself to care.

Underneath the bruises, he barely looks like the Ward she knew. He’s still closed off, but there’s no humor bubbling beneath the surface, no comfort. It’s just cockiness and rage.

She injects the serum into the crook of his arm, checks his vitals one last time, and takes a seat next to Coulson.

When the questioning starts, she watches him expectantly, trying to find proof her  
serum is working. He answers the control questions well, but he’s been told that’s never been an issue. It’s when they start pressing for the answers they need that they run into trouble. He speaks in riddles, never giving them a clear answer, but satisfying the sodium pentothal somehow. Hopefully her version of truth serum works better.

Coulson asks him how long he’s been working for Garrett. 

Ward’s mouth opens, some smart reply no doubt ready to come out. Then his eyes squeeze shut and his hisses, doubling over in pain as much as he can given the restraints he’s in.

It seems her serum is working.

“Sixteen,” he finally gasps out. “Since I was sixteen.”

He looks stunned by what they’ve made him confess. She ignores the volley of slurs and misogynistic insults that follow, once he’s put it together.

Instead, she focuses on the machines monitoring his vitals. She doesn’t want to hear what he has to say. The questions she wants answers to are minimal, and she doesn’t need them overheard by the rest of the team. She doesn’t want to know what excuses he has for what he’s done, or whatever lies in his past that helped make him this way. None of it will ever justify what he’s done. 

She’s vaguely aware of the names he’s listing off, Hydra plants still undercover, moving from SHIELD facilities to civilian ones, still masquerading as innocent. He names a former professor of hers, a scientist she worked with shortly after graduation, and a few people she knows vaguely from The Academy and various conferences. She focuses harder on the monitors, trying to predict the patterns in them as a distraction.

Finally, Coulson is satisfied with the information he’s been given. He leaves the room, off to make phone calls, ensure that these people can’t do anymore harm. May enters the room, the threat keeping Ward in line as Jemma dismantles her equipment.

She methodically detaches the sensors from his skin, once again avoiding eye contact. She knows the serum is still in his system. She could get the answers to the questions that haunt her when she allows herself to stop focusing on work, or Fitz, or the team.

Why? Why did you promise to catch me? Why did you break that promise so thoroughly?

The words hang on the tip of her tongue, but she forces them back. 

He won’t give her a satisfactory answer. There is no satisfactory answer.


End file.
